**The collection is a letter from Jackie Dean to Nancy Kaiser describing...

**The collection is a letter from Jackie Dean to Nancy Kaiser describing...

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==Transcribing Titles and Captions==

==Transcribing Titles and Captions==

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If an unpublished item, such as a photograph or home movie, has a title or caption written on it, we will likely want to replicate that title in the finding aid. We will want to distinguish between titles and captions that come with items from the titles and explanations that we provide. To do this, use quotations marks.

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If an unpublished item, such as a photograph or home movie, has a title or caption written on it, we will likely want to replicate that title in the finding aid. We will want to distinguish between titles and captions that come with items (creator-generated information) from the titles and explanations that we provide (archivist-generated information). To do this, we use quotations marks.

Examples:

Examples:

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*Titles

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*'''Creator-generated title'''

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For example, a photograph with "Cullom Hall, 1926" written on the back:

For example, a photograph that we identify as being Cullom Hall in 1926, includes a person we identify as Edward Cullom standing on front steps (not noted in original descriptions provided by creator):

*☺ ''She called herself <emph render="doublequote">Flo,</emph> but everyone knew her as Nancy.''

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*☺ ''She called herself <emph render="doublequote">Lil,</emph> but everyone knew her as Nancy.''

*☺ ''Included is the 1922 version of his unsold novel, <title render="doublequote">When Bad Things Happen to Bad People</title>; his unsold short story, <title render="doublequote">Worser and Worser</title>; and his unsold anthology, <title render="doublequote">Major Works.</title>''

*☺ ''Included is the 1922 version of his unsold novel, <title render="doublequote">When Bad Things Happen to Bad People</title>; his unsold short story, <title render="doublequote">Worser and Worser</title>; and his unsold anthology, <title render="doublequote">Major Works.</title>''

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'''Capitalization of series and subseries titles:''' Do capitalize all of the words in the supplied title at the series and subseries level.

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*☺ ''Series 1. Correspondence and Related Material''

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*☺ ''Series 2.1. Other Writings''

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'''Capitalization of file titles:''' Unless they are proper nouns or formal titles, only capitalize the first word of a file title.

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*☺ ''Folder 21 Other materials''

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*X ''Folder 21 Other Materials''

'''Capitalization of job titles:''' Don't capitalize job titles unless they are used as an identifier before a name.

'''Capitalization of job titles:''' Don't capitalize job titles unless they are used as an identifier before a name.

Line 311:

Line 325:

In browsers, this will look like this:

In browsers, this will look like this:

*☺ ''She consulted archivist Nancy Kaiser.''

*☺ ''She consulted archivist Nancy Kaiser.''

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==Civil War Letters==

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When describing a letter written by a Civil War soldier, if possible, include the following in the biographical and scope and content notes:

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*the regiment in which the writer served

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*if the writer was a soldier or an officer

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*where the writer was writing from and where he was writing to (if this is a quick processing job, you can often tell by looking at the very top of the letter and seeing where the writer was positioned—which makes you able to say, for example, that he was writing from Virginia, without reading more in depth)

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*what places are referenced in the letters

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*what battles are being described

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If you are describing the letters in more depth, you can include information about camp life, sickness, death, and other cheerful wartime subjects.

Saying It

Good writing and editing: Deathless prose is not required; good concise standard English is required. Be prepared to have your finding aid edited by those who have been writing these things for a long time. Sometimes editing corrects errors; sometimes it clarifies description. Often editing serves to add words or phrases that appear in finding aids describing materials similar to those in your collection. Editors add these words or phrases to facilitate searching across finding aids.

Timeliness of description: It’s tempting to say things like “Fluffy now lives in Cary, N.C., where she teaches obedience classes.” Although additions or other circumstances will cause some finding aids to be revised in future, many finding aids will represent their collections for years and years. If your description includes statements that talk about what someone’s doing now or where that someone currently lives or how many books she’s written, you risk your description becoming quickly outdated. You can get around this by making the description more oblique and therefore more able to endure the test of time. Some examples are:

☺ In 2001, Fluffy moved to Cary, N.C., where she taught obedience classes.

☺ As of 1969, she had written 18 novels about cane toads in Australia.

☺ The Hamptons had 24 children, 16 dogs, and 44 goldfish in 2001.

Lest ye be judged: You may think that the person you’re working on was the cat’s meow. Please remember, however, that you’re writing description, not evaluation or appreciation (that’s for the other side of the desk). Keep the judgment out of your words and your tone. Just the facts, please.

Verb tenses: Use the present tense when referring to the papers themselves. Use the past tense when referring to actions of the creators or recipients of the papers.

☺ There are three letters from John to Mary.

☺ In a letter of 3 June 1870, Amos described his trip to High Point, N.C.

Say it and say it again: We don't expect people to read our finding aids from beginning to end. This is especially true of EAD-encoded finding aids, which are designed to help researchers navigate directly to descriptions of the materials of interest. Therefore, do not hesitate to repeat important information (e.g., complete names, full titles of writings, when an event took place) wherever needed. This can get tricky. Ask for help if you are unsure about how much information to add at particular points.

BUT verbosity is discouraged: You’re writing description, not deathless prose. Keep it simple both in sentence structure and vocabulary choice. Again, remember that researchers don't typically read through the whole finding aid beginning to end, but seek out the parts that hold particular interest for them.

Finding aid phrases

Appears to have been: William D. McDowall appears to have been a partner with Charles J. Shannon in the firm of McDowall and Shannon of Charleston, S.C.

May have been: Articles and writings by D. Hiden Ramsey; some may have been intended as articles for the Asheville Citizen or other publications or as speeches.

Possibly related to: Account book with entries relating chiefly to food, some show equipment purchased. Page 84 contains an "Academy" account possibly related to construction work at Vine Hill Academy.

The relation between these materials and other materials in the collection is unclear: There are also envelopes and other papers. The relation between these materials and other materials in the collection is unclear.

Notable: Notable correspondents include Terry Sanford, Dean Smith, Christopher Fordham, many state and national politicians, and various editors and publishers.

A few: There are also a few photographs of Leavitt at various stages of his career.

Chiefly: Antebellum letters are chiefly about farming and family matters.

Scattered: About half of the undated letters were received by Louisa H. Watkins from relatives, with the bulk of the remainder addressed to her cousin George Hairston. Scattered items appear for Peter Watkins, Lizzie Hairston, and others.

Unrelated: Chiefly unrelated 19-century letters from several different states collected by James Baylor Blackford of Richmond, Va.

A wide variety of topics:Operations material is chiefly correspondence to and from executives of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. These files deal with a wide variety of topics and provide information on the day-to-day operation of the company.

A possible structure for scope and content notes:

The collection includes

There are also

There are (repeat as needed)

Also included

Includes verses contains:

"Includes" is more vague; "contains" is more specific.

The collection includes x, y, z, and other items.

The collection contains x, y, and z.

One item collections?

The collection is a letter from Jackie Dean to Nancy Kaiser describing...

Transcribing Titles and Captions

If an unpublished item, such as a photograph or home movie, has a title or caption written on it, we will likely want to replicate that title in the finding aid. We will want to distinguish between titles and captions that come with items (creator-generated information) from the titles and explanations that we provide (archivist-generated information). To do this, we use quotations marks.

Examples:

Creator-generated title

For example, a photograph with "Cullom Hall, 1926" written on the back:

For example, a photograph that we identify as being Cullom Hall in 1926, includes a person we identify as Edward Cullom standing on front steps (not noted in original descriptions provided by creator):

Abstracts and Collection Overviews for Multi-Series Collections

A good way to write a collection overview and the scope and content and biographical/historical abstracts: This is not the only way to write good collection overviews and abstracts, but it usually works pretty well. You may want to ask for guidance on how to do this the first time you give it a try. And see below for what to do when there's only one series.

Copy all your series descriptions into the collection overview area of the finding aid.

Edit the descriptions, retaining only the truly significant content (always a judgment call), to create the a collection overview. You may content tag the collection overview or leave it for the cataloger.

Copy the collection overview into the scope and content abstract area (<abstract encodinganalog="520">). Omit all internal tagging except <title> and <emph>.

Edit the scope and content abstract so that it's as concise as possible.

Review both abstracts to make sure that the necessary access points (online catalog headings) can be grounded in one or the other of them.

Abstracts and Collection Overviews for One-Series Collections

If you use the method above to write abstracts and collection overviews when there's just one series, you wind up with pretty much the same description three times in the finding aid (once in the series description, once in the collection overview, and once in the <abstract encodinganalog="520">. This is overkill. If you have only one series, write its description as the collection overview. Use the collection overview as the <abstract encodinganalog="520"> (with editing as needed). At the series level, you may either omit the <scopecontent> note entirely or use it for information that's not appropriate for the collection overview or abstract.

<bioghist> v. <scopecontent>

<bioghist> is about the creator(s) of the materials. <scopecontent> is about the materials in the collection. It’s sometimes difficult to separate what goes in one from what goes in the other. Try for as little overlap as possible. For example, if you’re working on the papers of a creator who was involved in a particular project and the resulting materials are what’s in the collection, talk about the creator’s background in <bioghist>. You can also mention that the creator undertook the project at hand. But save the details of the project for <scopecontent>. Here’s a short example:

☺ <bioghist>
<head>Biographical Note</head>
<p>Alma Ravenal was born in rural Georgia in 1831. Until the age of 25, she worked part-time
as a missionary in China. After her return to the United States, she became a
trapeze artist, traveling with various small circuses. During this period, she was involved
in a project to memorialize great trapeze artists who were also missionaries. Ravenal
died in 1876 as a result of a fall during a performance in DosiWallops, Wash.</p>
</bioghist>
<scopecontent>
<head>Collection Overview</head>
<p>The collection includes materials, 1870-1876, relating to missionary and trapeze
artist Alma Ravenal’s efforts to document the history of trapeze artists who were also
missionaries. Correspondence, 1870-1876, is chiefly between Ravenal and friends and
family members trying to convince her to give up her pursuit. Financial records
document expenditures for bail and other expenses Ravenal incurred as she became
increasingly vehement in her pursuit. Photographs are largely etc., etc.</p>
</scopecontent>

Folder Titles

Folder titles: Folder titles come in many shapes and sizes. In general:
Do not end folder titles with a period.

You may want to use the subordination model cited above when you want to list genre and dates for some folders and genre with modifying information for other folders. For example, a series may contain correspondence, 1901-1956; speeches for which you have both titles and dates; and miscellaneous other items. Remembering that you use a simple comma before locations and before dates, the folder list would look like this:

Creator-generated folder titles: We usually use creator-generated folder titles when we want to make a quick and dirty folder list.
Add this statement (or something close) just before the folder list begins when you are using folder titles as received:

☺ Note that original file folder titles have, for the most part, been retained.

HOWEVER, take that statement with a grain of salt: Make the list as intelligible as you can without fretting over the contents of each folder. You may have to spell out abbreviations or take a quick look to see what some weird combination of letters and numbers means.

The creator may have been creative with names, punctuation, date style, etc., but you must strive for consistency. Making the creator's folder titles conform to our style is usually just a question of re-ordering the words. Do not hesitate to do this. It's okay to list names in first name, last name order or last name, first name order, but you should pick one and do it consistently throughout the listing.

Folder list order: Folder order should have some kind of logic. Alphabetical or chronological order should be easily discerned. Any other order should make sense in terms of the papers. You are under no obligation to include an <arrangement> statement for each series or subseries. If there is no discernible order (especially in short folder lists), leave the <arrangement> statement out.

Alphabetical by name means last name, first name.

☺ Polk, Leonidas LaFayette

Company names that include a person’s name are alphabetized by the first letter of the first word in the name.

☺ J. M. Dent and Sons

Names: Personal and Corporate

Consistency: Try to be consistent in how you write names. It is often best to use the fullest version of the name first in each section of your EAD finding aid (e.g., abstracts, biographical/historical note, collection overview, c01 series descriptions). In subsequent references within each section, you may use either the last name alone (unless this makes for unclear references) or the most-used combination of given and surname. If the appropriate name is Hetty Betty Bodine, you may refer to her as Bodine or Hetty Betty Bodine or perhaps Hetty Bodine or Hetty. Do not, however, arbitrarily start calling her Hetty B. Bodine or H. Betty Bodine or Betty (unless she went by Betty, in which case, use that name consistently).

Abbreviations: Usually spell out names of corporate bodies. There can be exceptions, but this will be determined on a case-by-case basis, often according to whether or not there is an authority record for a name. For example, use and instead of & unless you know that the authority record specifies & (remember to use & for & in EAD-encoded finding aids).

☺ University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

☺ Smith and Company

Names: Places

Abbreviations: Always use the approved Library of Congress state abbreviations when the state is a modifier. Note that these are NOT the 2-letter standard United States Post Office abbreviations. Note also that there is no space between N. and C. (N.C.) or S. and C. (S.C.) or W. and Va. (W.Va.).

Places as part of name: Always spell out state names when they are part of a name. This also goes for United States.

☺ North Carolina Center for Public Policy Research

☺ West Virginia Prison for Women

☺ United States Senate.

Stand-alones: Always spell out state names when they stand alone. This also goes for United States.

☺ She is a native of North Carolina.

☺ They came to the United States in 1856.

Titles

Use <title> tags to add italics or quotation marks to formal titles; use <emph> tags to add bold, italic, or quotation marks in all other cases.

Italics: Use italics for published books, pamphlets; proceedings, collections of materials (e.g., short story collections, poetry collections), long poems, periodicals, and newspapers (including newspaper sections published separately). Also use italics for motion pictures; major musical works (e.g., operas, symphonies), paintings, drawings, statues, and other works of art. Make sure the </title> tag comes before any ending punctuation.

☺ In his <title render="italic">Dictionary of North Carolina Biography</title>, Powell ...*☺ Her column appeared in the <title render="italic">Charlotte News</title>, 1942-1953.

☺ He wrote for the <title render="italic">New York Times Book Review</title> regularly between 1966 and 1970.

☺ His poetry collection, <title render="italic">Call of the Wildest</title> (Oxford, 1951), won the North Carolina Weird Poetry Society award in 1952.

☺ He wrote extensively about seeing a production of <title render="italic">The Emperor Jones</title> in 1939.

Quotation marks: Use quotation marks for theses, dissertations, short stories, short poems, chapters, journal and newspaper articles, columns, and all unpublished works regardless of length. Make sure the </title> tag comes before or after punctuation as appropriate.

☺ His novel, <title render="doublequote">Wilder West,</title> was never published.

☺ His poem, <title render="doublequote">Now There Are None</title> won the Minor Poets of Portland award in 1902.

<title> v. <emph>

<title> and <emph> result in the same outputs to the screen, but they're not the same intellectually. <title> is for titles, italic or quoted; <emph> supplies italic or quotation marks in all other cases. Most of the time, you'll have a title. Examples of correct <emph> usage include:

☺ The letter indicates that she was <emph render="doublequote">goosed</emph> by the soldier.

☺ In the letter from Gettysburg, Penn., dated 3 July 1863, he wrote, <emph render="doublequote">What the <emph render="italic">HELL</emph> am I doing here?</emph>

☺ Her name was McGill, and she called herself <emph render="doublequote">Lil,</emph> but everyone knew her as <emph render="doublequote">Nancy.</emph>

Commas, Other Punctuation, Capitalization

Introductory phrases and clauses: Use a comma to set off all introductory phrases and clauses.

☺ In December 1980, she totally freaked out.

☺ By the following summer, she was the CEO for a leading corporation.

Terms in series: In a series of three or more terms, use a comma after each term.

☺ She traveled to Raleigh, Atlanta, and Memphis.

Names as modifiers: With appositives involving names, add a comma when the full name is used. Leave the comma out when only part of a name is used.

☺ His wife, Mary Johnson Smith, ran away in 1806.

☺ His daughter Sue was a famous stripper.

Other modifiers: Use commas before and after location names used as modifiers but not before and after Jr./Sr.

☺ Goodman moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., in August 1900.

☺ Ken Griffey Jr. never attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

☺ She called herself <emph render="doublequote">Lil,</emph> but everyone knew her as Nancy.

☺ Included is the 1922 version of his unsold novel, <title render="doublequote">When Bad Things Happen to Bad People</title>; his unsold short story, <title render="doublequote">Worser and Worser</title>; and his unsold anthology, <title render="doublequote">Major Works.</title>

Capitalization of series and subseries titles: Do capitalize all of the words in the supplied title at the series and subseries level.

☺ Series 1. Correspondence and Related Material

☺ Series 2.1. Other Writings

Capitalization of file titles: Unless they are proper nouns or formal titles, only capitalize the first word of a file title.

☺ Folder 21 Other materials

X Folder 21 Other Materials

Capitalization of job titles: Don't capitalize job titles unless they are used as an identifier before a name.

☺ She was director of the Sports Information office.

☺ Robert Wagner, mayor of New York City, was there.

☺ Mayor Robert Wagner of New York City was there.

Dates

General: Dates style is as follow. No commas, please.

☺ 23 April 1876

☺ April 1876

Centuries: Use arabic numerals for centuries. Include a hyphen if the century is used as an adjective.

☺ 19th century

☺ 20th century

☺ 10th century

☺ 18th-century politics

Date spans: Never use a from without a to.

X She was fire chief from 1906-1920.

☺ She was fire chief from 1906 to 1920.

☺ She was fire chief, 1906-1920.

Numbers

Use numerals for centuries.

☺ She was the first woman to win the prize in the 20th century.

Use numerals for troop numbers.

☺ He served with the 1st North Carolina Volunteers.

Spell out numbers 1-12 when they appear singly in text. Use numerals when they represent a numerical span.

☺ She is known to have eaten twelve blueberry pies at the 1907 state fair.

☺ Spell out numbers 1-12 when they appear singly in text.

Spell out numbers when they appear at the beginning of sentences (or reconstruct the sentence so that the number does not come first).

☺ One hundred years later, he was still eating blueberry pie.

Spaces

One space rules: Always use ONE space after punctuation (periods, colons, whatever). In an EAD finding aid, there is never a time that you need more than one space in a row.

X Smith gave birth to sextuplets in 1983.••They were called:••Manny, Moe, Jack, Eloise, Heloise, and Fran.••In 1984, Smith joined the Foreign Legion.

☺ Smith gave birth to sextuplets in 1983.•They were called:•Manny, Moe, Jack, Eloise, Heloise, and Fran.•In 1984, Smith joined the Foreign Legion.

Dashes: Dashes should not be surrounded by spaces:

X 1983•-•1984

☺ 1983-1984

Extra spaces in and around EAD tags: Extra spaces in and around tags are sometimes hard to see, but you must train yourself to be vigilant. These extra spaces show up in the beginning or middle of statements when the document is displayed in xml or html, resulting in too much space between words or causing misalignment of lists (e.g., online catalog terms, folder number lists, folder titles). Extra spaces at the ends of statements do not show up, but are discouraged.

X <bioghist><head>Biographical Note</head>

•Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874), the original Siamese twins, were born in Meklong, Siam.••

☺ <bioghist><head>Biographical Note</head>

Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874), the original Siamese twins, were born in Meklong, Siam.

Civil War Letters

When describing a letter written by a Civil War soldier, if possible, include the following in the biographical and scope and content notes:

the regiment in which the writer served

if the writer was a soldier or an officer

where the writer was writing from and where he was writing to (if this is a quick processing job, you can often tell by looking at the very top of the letter and seeing where the writer was positioned—which makes you able to say, for example, that he was writing from Virginia, without reading more in depth)

what places are referenced in the letters

what battles are being described

If you are describing the letters in more depth, you can include information about camp life, sickness, death, and other cheerful wartime subjects.

Miscellaneous

Chair and chairman: If we agree to use chair for both males and females, we cannot go wrong.

Correspondence:Correspondence means an exchange of letters. If we say, Also included is correspondence between Amos Trevellyan and his daughter Alma, we mean that there are letters from Amos to Alma as AND letters from Alma to Amos. Do not use correspondence when there are letters going only one way. If the collection includes chiefly incoming letters and only a few outgoing letters, which may or may not be paired together, correspondence is still the correct term.

Things southern: It's the South, not the south. BUT it is southern and southerner, not Southern and Southerner.

X He was from the south.

☺ He was from the South.

X We traveled South on the highway.

☺ We traveled south on the highway.

X The tea had a very Southern taste.

☺ The tea had a very southern taste.

X He was a Southerner.

☺ He was a southerner.

University of North Carolina: Our institution is currently the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It has been so since 1963. Any materials relating to this institution through 1962 are from the University of North Carolina. For the earlier period, you can also say University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill or University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill if you like. Use the appropriate full form of the name the first time it is mentioned in each section (Collection Overview, series/subseries scope and content notes) so that it can be content tagged with <corpname> if needed. For subsequent mentions within sections, you can use UNC or UNC-Chapel Hill as appropriate. Do not use UNC-CH.